Mama (2013)

Mama Synopsis

Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their mother was murdered. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night.

The day their father killed their mother, sisters Victoria and Lilly vanished near their suburban neighborhood. For five long years, their Uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), have been madly searching for them. But when, incredibly, the kids are found alive in a decrepit cabin, the couple wonders if the girls are the only guests they have welcomed into their home.

As Annabel tries to introduce the children to a normal life, she grows convinced of an evil presence in their house. Are the sisters experiencing traumatic stress, or is a ghost coming to visit them? How did the broken girls survive those years all by themselves? As she answers these disturbing questions, the new mother will find that the whispers she hears at bedtime are coming from the lips of a deadly presence.

This week, fans can choose between purchasing Christopher McQuarrie’s big action flick, Jack Reacher, Andy Muschietti’s terrifying horror flick, Mama, and the newest Nicholas Sparks adaptations, Safe Haven, which mixes the usual romance up with a few thriller aspects. Overall, there’s a lot to choose from in a lot of different genres of film.

With a January release date, it seemed like Mama might have a little bit of trouble during its theatrical release. Luckily, people did come out to the theater in the weeks post-holidays to catch the flick, bringing over $112 million worldwide. If you are quite ready for the flick to be released into homes, Universal Studios Home Entertainment says Mama will be available on Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand on May 7

Mama was a surprise hit for Universal earlier this year, capitalizing on a recognizable leading lady (in Jessica Chastain) and a chilling story executed by director Andres Muschietti. Once the film banked $68 million in the States, you had to know that the studio would start to explore franchise opportunities, and that’s what appears to be developing.

Martin Luther King Jr. weekend brought with it the first Schwarzenegger headlined movie in almost a decade, something of a box office coup for the award season's darling Silver Linings Playbook, and somewhere in there President Obama officially started his second term. But the most interesting bit of news? The number one spot went to a PG-13 horror movie.

This week on Operation Kino, we're coping with our childhoods raised feral in the woods by a mysterious ghost, as we review the Guillermo del Toro-produced horror film Mama. From there we take a look into our crystal balls for the year ahead, picking the movies of 2013

With so many titles to choose from, Netflix Instant's library can be overwhelming. So we offer this biweekly column as a tool to cut through the clutter by highlighting some now streaming titles that pair nicely with the latest theatrical releases.

Little Rotten Week is celebrating a birthday today, two years old, so I’ve got some party prep to accomplish. But that can wait while we take a look at this week’s slate of movies. There’s Arnie taking a stand, cities breaking and little girls haunted by ghosts (What else is new, am I right?)

The feature-length version of the story will explain that the two girls have been lost in the woods for an extended amount of time, discovered as feral children, and handed over to distant relatives (played by Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). All the girls seem to say is “Mama,” and the audience will be horrified to learn why this is the case.

Mama centers on Annabel and Lucas, a couple who are obligated to take in his young nieces who have practically gone feral after five years in the woods alone. Annabel is a caring but reluctant mother figure to the two spooked children, but as they grow close, she discovers they have brought something dangerous with them into her home.

According to Del Toro, Andres Muschietti’s horror feature started as a short film about two orphaned girls found in the woods. They are handed over to a foster parent (played, in the movie, by the versatile Jessica Chastain), only to learn that their supernatural “mother” has followed them.

t's not just moviemaking that del Toro somehow makes the time for. He spent an hour chatting with us on the set of Mama, as if he had absolutely nowhere else to be, and then invited us to a screening that night at Toronto's Bell Lightbox theater, where he would be presenting the obscure Italian horror movie L'acrno Incantatore (we went; it was very strange but kind of a thrill)

Is Mama a horror movie? Depends on who you ask. Star Jessica Chastain, who freely admits to being a scaredy cat, most definitely says yes. The film's visual effects supervisor Ed Taylor says absolutely not-- "I like to call it a ghost story. It’s about hope, it’s about what a parent is - how do you define a parent? And it’s about fighting for what you love."

I saw Jessica Chastain in 5 different movies in 2011, and yet when I saw her walk in a room in October of last year, I didn't recognize her. And in a way you might not expect from a young starlet on a very fast rise to fame, she seemed completely delighted to fly under the radar. "Did you know it was me when I walked in?" she asked with a laugh after sitting down with group of journalists

Mama centers on Victoria and Lilly, two little girls who have had a rough childhood to say the least. The tragic day when their father murdered their mother, the two sisters took off into the wood and vanished. Their surviving uncle, Lucas, has been searching for them for five years when they are finally discovered, alive but practically feral. He and his girlfriend Annabel take the girls in, but Annabel soon suspects there's something strange attached to these two.

It has been far too long since Guillermo del Toro last directed a film (his most recent was 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army). And since it will be another year until we get to see Pacific Rim, we have to settle on films del Toro “presents,” the next of which will be the ghost thriller Mama, due in theaters early next year. Instead of describing it, we’re happy to post the first official trailer, provided by Universal. It’s chilling.

Coster-Waldau garnered quite a bit of buzz for his portrayal of the sinister Jamie Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones. He’s brilliant on that show and I’m excited to see him coming back to film as well. Chastain’s star is thoroughly on the rise of late. She’s turned up in The Debt, The Help, and Tree of Life. She has a powerful screen presence that only seems to increase from project to project.

The plot for the feature is being kept secret, but the entire short is available via YouTube to give you an idea of what's coming. The story in the short is slight-- it's not even three minutes long!-- but acts as kind of a window into what we can expect from a feature film